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It looks like the torque wrench is delayed. It left Fresno, CA on Monday and was supposed to arrive here today. Checking tracking, it was in Sacramento on Tuesday (good), hung around Sacramento until yesterday (less good), arrived in Troutdale, OR today at lunchtime (good-ish) and is now in transit to Westminster, CO (what???) I'm not great with geography, but even I know that's not on the way to Seattle. Tracking now says it will arrive tomorrow, but the CO mention doesn't inspire confidence. Time for a Martini.

FedEx has updated the tracking. It still shows it arrived in Troutdale yesterday around noon, and was in transit to Westminster shortly after, but they have now added that it left Troutdale last night (timestamped more than 8 hours after the In transit to Westminster timestamp) and arrived at my local hub early this morning. If that's true, I should have the head torqued this afternoon.

Head is torqued, cams are installed, and the chain drive assembly with new mechanical chain tensioner is in place. The factory Duratec uses a hydraulic tensioner, which works fine, but can have issues in high rpm engines that result in over tensioning or broken teeth on the plastic ratcheting mechanism. The fix is a simple modification that replaces the plastic ratchet with a threaded metal stop.

I ran into a slight issue when attempting to time the cams. Kent uses their own adjustable cam gears that aren't interchangeable with the factory set. For some reason the tolerances between my old gears and new DTEC20 cams are much tighter than with the old DTEC10 cams. They're more of a press fit than a slip fit which means they aren't really adjustable, but I tried anyway until running out of both patience and time. I'll remove the timing chain and cam gears tomorrow, take some measurements, and figure out if lightly sanding the coating might free up enough room. If not, I'll call Kent on Monday.

I removed the timing chain and exhaust side gear from the engine, and put the gear on a DTEC10 cam to make sure my memory of fit was correct. Surprisingly it was. Although tight, the gear was easy to rotate on the cam end by hand. In contrast, the gears are a tight enough fit on the new DTEC20 cams that a gear puller is required to remove them. The calipers showed the problem. The nose of the cam end that forms the stop for the bolt and sticks through the face of the gear (see left side of photo) is .006" wider than the nose on the old cams. Just enough to cause a problem. I think I'll hold off any attempts to enlarge the hole in each gear until I can speak with Kent Cams tomorrow.

After unsuccessfully trying to reach Kent's technical department for the past hour (I'm sorry, no one is currently available to take your call), I had an epiphany and did a search. Yep, today is also a holiday in the UK. Do we have a Bollocks emoticon?

After unsuccessfully trying to reach Kent's technical department for the past hour (I'm sorry, no one is currently available to take your call), I had an epiphany and did a search. Yep, today is also a holiday in the UK. Do we have a Bollocks emoticon?